"Government Revises Tornado Ratings Scale"

[GreenPartyVoter]

ATLANTA (AP) - The government is changing how it categorizes tornadoes after finding that it doesn't take 300 mph winds to disintegrate homes and turn cars into missiles - a 200 mph twister can do just as much damage.

The National Weather Service said Thursday it had changed the Fujita Scale, a three-decade-old system of ranking a tornado's strength, to align wind speeds more closely with actual damage.

"It was apparent that many of the speeds used in the estimates were too large, said Joe Schaefer, director of the service's Storm Prediction Center. "The scale guiding wind speeds wasn't in tune with reality."

The change was introduced at the American Meteorological Society meeting in Atlanta. However, the new system will not fully go into effect until February 2007, giving weather scientists time to adjust to it.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20060202/D8FH9BE01.html